THERE’S NO I IN INTEGRITY
Integrity is the foremost measure of character between you and me. The dictionary will define integrity as an adherence to a code of values, but even that is ambiguous. Integrity means that you will do what you say you will do and I do what I say I will do. Anything less and the bond between us begins to fray and eventually snap. When it finally breaks it’s much like the rupture of a taut Achilles tendon. The two ends will curl away from each other and must be stretched under great pressure to even come close enough to begin the net back together. There is much pain and a long period of time elapses before the bond is trusted again, if it ever is.
Well, actually there are two. I and I. You and me. Integrity is the foremost measure of character between you and me. The dictionary will define integrity as an adherence to a code of values, but even that is ambiguous. Integrity means that you will do what you say you will do and I do what I say I will do. Anything less and the bond between us begins to fray and eventually snap. When it finally breaks it’s much like the rupture of a taut Achilles tendon. The two ends will curl away from each other and must be stretched under great pressure to even come close enough to begin the net back together. There is much pain and a long period of time elapses before the bond is trusted again, if it ever is.
In leadership, whether in the church or in a secular setting, surveys have demonstrated over and over that the most important character trait in a leader’s integrity. If people are going to follow a leader into battle or into ministry they must know that the leader’s word is rock solid. They do what they say they’re going to do. Always. Without excuses. Even if it requires sacrifice on their part.
They are often misappropriated verse in the epistle of James speaks to the impact that integrity can have.
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. James 2:18
It is as easy to claim to have faith as it is to pound your chest and claim the solidity of your integrity. Because we do not exist in a vacuum it’s also easy enough for those around us to evaluate our claims of both faith and integrity. If we claim faith in the God of the universe and His Son Jesus Christ but live lives contrary to the obedience and character demanded of a recipient of his magnificent grace that our faith is certainly questionable. In the same way, proclamations of integrity fall on deaf ears when our actions demonstrate that we cannot be trusted. The Christian leader who finds themselves in this position also has a ministry that is over before it starts. God is not going to bless something that begins by bringing dishonor to His name.
Our hope would be to be found like Israel’s leaders Samuel. After having led Israel for decade after decade Samuel stands before all the people and lays himself bare. (1 Samuel 12:1-4) He states without hesitation that if he has wrongly taken anything from anyone he will repay. If he has cheated or oppressed anyone he will make reparation. If he has been less than honest in any of his dealings he will confess and make right any illicit bargain. “I will make it right” are Samuel’s farewell words before Israel and his God.
The people reply “you have not cheated or oppressed us,” and “you have not taken anything from anyone’s hand.” Samuel had integrity.
Our Trials Give Hope to Others
Doing Good or Doing Well
The Metrics of Mission
Measuring the performance of a missional church community is not performed using the same yardstick as many modern churches utilize. While the paramount measure of success in some church circles is bottoms in seats, the missional church evaluates their adherence to the missio dei by how many seats are provided for bottoms. Rather than making a mission of increasing the budget year over year, a missional community will consider the percentage of their budget turned around into the mission field. Tallying the noses of the churched kids who attend a VBS is one number, taking the VBS under various guises to the unreached children of the area is an entirely different count. In every missional metric the priority is reaching, touching and influencing the lives of our neighbors with the truth and reality of the gospel.
As Willow Creek discovered years ago, the metric used to evaluate success doesn’t always align with God’s intention for the church. Their numbers in terms of attendance and conversion were staggering by any measure but the culture that generated those numbers also came at a high cost. As the adage goes, they were a mile wide and an inch deep. “Go and make disciples” had reduced to “baptize them”, a crucial measure but only half the mission. The Commission is holistic and intended to build a self-replicating community of believers who will join the cycle and further the mission.
The missional church may never attain the size of a market-entertainment-self help driven church. That will always be more attractive to the itching ears of our time. The missional body will grow, perhaps not as numerically quickly, but in a more important aspect, they will grow spiritually. The numbers in this world may not impress but the results in the Kingdom ahead will be staggering.
image by Roland Tanglao
Six Things God Knows About YOU
And He Wants You to Know He Knows…
Christians will rightly spend time coming to know the attributes and Word of God in order to “know” Him better. To develop a relationship with God is to know what he has revealed about himself and come to see how those attributes affect one’s life. There is also a symmetry to relationship and it increases in depth and meaning when we contemplate those things that God knows about us. Not only does God know these things about us,He he also wants us to know that He is mindful of His people in this way.
ONE: He knows how you’re put together. You are not just a random assembly of cells. You are a vessel so unique and valuable that God imprints his image upon you. This is not a licensing deal; God has elected to take an active role in the knitting together of those who will bear the divine image (Ps 139:13; Jer 1:5)
TWO: Because of his intimate involvement in shaping the vessel of his image, the Potter also knows your heart and mind. He knows you to the depth of your personality and soul. He knows what makes you tick and what ticks you off. (Jer 17; 1 Kg 8:39)
THREE: Every corner of your heart is familiar territory to God and there are no shadows obscuring any feeling from His gaze. He knows your joys and triumphs as well as your hurts and troubles and He cares about both. (Ps 56:6; Ps 103:13)
FOUR: God knows your needs even before you can find the words to declare them. This might be a challenge to understand sometimes because, as people, we often are more aware of our surface desires than we are of our deepest needs. God does not struggle with that differentiation and wants to help us to recognize what our deepest and most fundamental needs are. (Mt 6:8)
FIVE: The irreplaceable image of God baked into every human being creates within them a desire to be reunited with the creator. In other words, God knows that you want to know him even before you become aware of that desire. In this knowledge God has commissioned his Spirit to be about the work of heightening awareness and creating opportunity for this reunification to occur. (Eph 1:17-19; John 17:3)
SIX: Your name summarizes the essence of who you are as God demonstrated to Moses with the thunderous “I Am” and God knows your name. You are not a chance occurrence, but rather, an infinitely valuable creation, known and treasured by God. (Is 43:1)
Genocide Of The Innocents
God’s plan for addressing the genocide of the unborn diagnosed with Down Syndrome is simple. It is His people.
IN ALL THINGS GOD WORKS FOR THE GOOD OF THOSE WHO LOVE HIM : CHARLESTON EDITION
So where was God at work for those who love Him when the shooter in Charleston entered His house and began making martyrs with a pistol?
In the title you likely recognized a very familiar passage from Romans often ripped from its context and applied to different life situations indiscriminately. When that happens the meaning of the verse in the larger passage becomes muddled, and even lost. The idea of God working all things for good can adopt a diminished connotation, taking on the secular definition of good — a positive, pleasing outcome.
So where was God at work for those who love Him when the shooter in Charleston entered His house and began making martyrs with a pistol?
The answer requires that you travel back months and years in the faithful journey of the pastor and the disciples of the church who were mindful of preparing their hearts and souls for an event that they never imagined would be visited upon their church. They took seriously what the Lord taught in the Beatitudes and shaped their souls with his command to love your neighbor as yourself. They knew the necessity of recognizing the heart as the wellspring of life and were diligent in prayer and study to strengthen in shape that heart.
The good that God had worked in his people in the AME Church in Charleston was seen almost immediately in the aftermath of the shooting. A feverish news media descended on the crime scene looking high and low for someone who would shout words of racial division or a demand for the scalp of the shooter. Disappointed, all they received from the remaining members of the church were Christ-like words of forgiveness and love for the young man who had made such life shattering decision.
This is a challenge to understand until we grasp what Paul is saying in this verse in its context. The good that God works for is those things that increasingly conform us to the likeness of our Savior. It may be positive things and it may be life-changing events. Both stretch and test our souls in different ways giving the Holy Spirit ample opportunity to shape and mold us into the people that our Father intends us to be.
People whose first impulse is to love and forgive when hateful revenge seems to be the most appealing course.
image by Ken Wilcox
Finding Beauty in the Smallest Places
image by Warren Rachele
SIDE BY SIDE: 2 audacious lists
Two Lists Will Revolutionize Your Relationship with God
Praise the Lord, O my soul; and forget not all his benefits– Psalm 103:2
In a busy life it is all too easy to miss God at work. We can become so wrapped up in our daily lives that the sometimes subtle moves of God all around us can fade into our surroundings and we walk right by.Some will not be noticed and missed forever. Others will be sensed at the amygdala level and later, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, will receive the full attention of the brain. We can call these ‘near misses’.
It’s certainly possible to proceed through life unaware of God at work. We can remain faithful and repentant to the best of our ability. We can just exist, naïve to what we are missing but this is a difficult position to maintain. Once the Christian has tasted the briefest experience of knowing the living, active God at this level, he is driven to experience more. This is by design in the relationship between God and human kind and it serves a purpose in the course of discipleship.To become cognizant of God at work begins to form our confidence. He has promised to be at work and we have seen him at work. Confidence builds faith. Our witness to the work of God trains us to place ever greater trust in His promises. Faith builds boldness. If God has been faithful in promise A He will be faithful in promise B despite appearances to the contrary. Greater trust, greater faith and audacious boldness lead to the fullness of life promised to the people of God.
Two sheets of paper can start the trust building exercise. On page one, list the experiences you have had that evidence God at work around you. This is an easy list to start since the first experience you have to record is your own salvation. Build from there recording moments in which you have seen God at work in your life or the lives of others. Make note of the transformation that occurred. Search the scriptures for promises that align with that experience. Write it all down and set it aside.
The second sheet of paper will contain a record of near misses, those times in which you walked past God at work only to realize it later. Perhaps it was an evangelistic opportunity or a moment in which you could have encouraged another person, brought correction for them, comforted them. We call these near misses because the Spirit reminds us after the fact that we passed by the Father without notice. This activates the Reticular nerves and we become more aware of our surroundings, seeing things that had not been noticed before.
When you have completed both lists place them side by side. Ask yourself, if God has been faithful and actively working in those instances on list A, won’t He also be faithful and active when you become more aware of the moments on list B? Of course! The witness of list A builds your confidence and your increasing confidence contributes to a deepening faith. That faith and your heightened spider-sense will transform you from being an observer to one actively seeking to be involved with the Father’s work. Now, you’re living.
image by Ana C.
5 Ways of seeing God at work
The discipleship of Simon Peter included numerous instances of seeing Jesus address the deepest human needs that He encountered in the power and authority given Him by his Father. When the time came for him to step out on his own he had to do so in faith, trusting that the power promised to him by Jesus would be there. Standing firm on that promise and having seen the power work in the past, when Peter sees the crippled beggar at the Temple gate (Acts 3) he seizes the opportunity literally reach out in trust. “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”
Peter acts for two reasons. One, he has seen the power of the kingdom in action by spending time with Jesus. He knows what is possible and has even greater faith in that power since the Resurrection, Ascension and the cacophonous coming of the Holy Spirit. The second reason builds on that experience; Peter is much more spiritually aware than he had ever been and was learning to recognize those instances in which the Spirit was already in the vicinity and at work. The lame man’s deepest need was not a few pennies, it was the redemption of his soul and this is what Peter reaches for.
Your confidence in the Spiritual power implanted within you is built the same way, by observing and remembering the way that the promises have been fulfilled around you. The first and easiest incident that you can catalog is your own salvation. Take out your journal and make note of where you were prior to that move of Kingdom power and follow that by a description of where you are today. No matter the distance from point A and point B, rejoice and trust that the same power that moved you will move others.
Next, look in the lives of your redeemed friends and family. Haven’t they experienced a similar move in soul growth? Perhaps you never took the time to notice? How about prayer? Could it bee that God has answered your prayers (already) and you have not developed enough spiritual awareness to see the sometimes subtle way in which answers are given. Look through your petitions and consider the number of broad or specific ways that God could answer. It may have been in front of you the whole time.
The fourth place to look for God’s work is in your Church. Be careful in instantly equating growth in head count as evidence of God at work. Regardless of the size of the church, the place to look for God at work is in fulfilling the mission He has given His people. Many churches (to borrow a cultural phrase) punch beyond their weight class.
Finally, look back over the past week or month and let the Spirit Himself bring to mind the moments that you missed. Your own “lame man” moment that intersected with your path. The moment when you too could have reached out at said “walk!”
image by Natesh Ramasamy
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 